Following my previous post about Studio Paradiso, I decided to add some of the life drawing I’ve been doing this year. I added a page to this website under the header Life Drawing Gallery. I haven’t yet graduated to sessions longer than 45 minutes, but I’m hoping to work up to it this year. Let’s see how I do! ;-)

I’m providing something a little different today. Most of my blog posts are news updates relating to the projects I’m working on or process posts, but today I’m presenting a sequential cartoon strip that I drew specifically for this blog. It’s also unique because it’s autobiographical and expresses something I care passionately about. I’m calling it an “advertoon” because its meant to support my friend’s business, but I compiled this series of images simply because I wanted to express something important to me. Thanks for taking at look.

I took some time off from blogging last month, did you notice? That wasn’t intentional, but I’m finishing the graphic novel that I’ve been working on this year and I guess that preoccupation was to blame for the neglect. Here’s a panel from a page I colored over the weekend. I’ll see if I can get aamcconnell.com back in motion this month. Maybe Tintin and Snowy can help…

Remember that I excitedly announced that 13th Age was up for a 2014 ENnie Award or 3? Well, evidently the winners are selected by popular vote. If you are so inclined, please follow this LINK to the ballot and vote for 13th Age in categories Best Game, Best Rules, and Product of the Year. (Then go ahead and place your bets secure in the knowledge that you rocked the vote.) Voting ends tomorrow, so don’t hesitate.

Detail from an illustration in the core book, page 73 seen here: And here’s the original sketch. Hey! The numbers keep changing, don’t they?! That bookie can’t be trusted!

I have a couple years to go before I can say I’ve been a freelance illustrator for over a decade, but I have been doing it long enough to know that receiving any kind of accolade for a project is an extremely rare occasion. So it was much to my delight to discover that 13th Age has been nominated in three different categories including Best Game in the ENnies, The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards. Cause for celebration IMHO, and especially humbled to be considered among the other nominees.

I couldn’t help waxing nostalgic about how I got involved in this project back in 2012. I had no idea how many hours and how much enthusiasm I would foster for the project between then and now. My very first illustration for 13th Age was a pencil drawing of the Archmage, if I remember correctly. You can see this Announcement Post about that piece back then. I was trying to remember which interior piece I worked on first and I don’t know if it was the absolute first, but the Clerics were definitely one of the earliest. These are the clerics as seen on page 188 of the core book: I hadn’t seen what Lee Moyer did to finish this piece until I saw it printed in the book, 2013. You can image what a treat that was for me. My memory of the piece was the pencil version that I handed over to Lee the previous year as seen here: Below is the rough sketch that I submitted to Rob Heinsoo. I hadn’t figured out how I was going to depict those spirits emanating from the male cleric’s magic item, and apparently it was compromised by the Diabolist because demonic spirits seem to be escaping rather than angelic ones! The clerics in this sketch were a bit light on armor for Rob’s taste, so I think he sent me some snapshots of tabletop miniatures for reference, but I can’t find them! It was all the way back in 2012 after all. Seems like Ages ago…